# Sermorelin research dosing context — what the published trials administered > What the published sermorelin research administered: pediatric, aging, HIV-lipodystrophy, and cognitive trial dosing — route, frequency, duration. For research context only. A reading of the published research doses — by population, by route, by duration. No recommendations. No instructions. The literature as it was administered. ## What this page is — and is not This page collects the doses that were administered in published peer-reviewed studies — doses given to specific populations under formal research protocols. It does not recommend any dose for any person or any use. There is no current FDA-approved finished sermorelin product on the US market [12]. The numbers come from the pediatric trial (30 mcg/kg nightly, subcutaneous), the aging studies (10 mcg/kg or 1 mg/day nightly), the HIV-lipodystrophy RCT (1 mg twice daily), and the pharmacokinetic work that mapped the half-life and bioavailability. What is clear from the published record is that injection is the delivery route with any evidence behind it — the intranasal bioavailability is only about 6 percent — and that nightly timing aligns with the body's own sleep-linked GH pulse. ## Why this page exists Dose context is one of the most-searched things about sermorelin and one of the most consistently misrepresented online. This page collects the doses that were administered in published peer-reviewed trials — including the original pediatric trial that supported the 1997 FDA approval — for research-reading purposes only. It does not recommend any dose for any use. It does not address compounding pharmacy practice. There is no current FDA-approved finished sermorelin product on the U.S. market [12]. ## Pediatric GH-deficiency dosing in the 1996 trial The Geref International Study Group trial in prepubertal children with documented GH deficiency administered **30 mcg/kg sermorelin acetate subcutaneously, nightly**, for at least six months [2]. Nightly timing was chosen to align with endogenous slow-wave-sleep GH pulses. Injections were given in the abdomen or thigh. The trial enrolled 110 children and the primary endpoint was annualized height velocity [2]. This is the dose and schedule that anchored the 1997 FDA approval of Geref. It is the cleanest dose-finding in the sermorelin literature, but it applies to a defined deficient pediatric population and should not be read across to other populations or other endpoints. ## Aging research dosing (the Khorram and Vittone protocols) Khorram and colleagues administered **10 mcg/kg subcutaneously, nightly, for 16 weeks** to adults aged 55-71 [3]. Vittone and colleagues used a comparable nightly subcutaneous dose of GHRH(1-29) for six weeks in healthy elderly men [4]. The Baker cognitive trial in 137 older adults used a fixed **1 mg/day subcutaneous** dose for 20 weeks rather than a body-weight-scaled dose [6]. These are research doses in defined trial populations under formal protocols. The literature does not establish a safe or effective dose for any indication in adults outside these protocols, and the trials themselves do not propose clinical use. ## HIV-lipodystrophy dosing The Koutkia *JAMA* RCT used **1 mg of GHRH subcutaneously, twice daily, for 12 weeks** in HIV-positive men with lipodystrophy [5]. The Stanley tesamorelin trial in HIV-associated NAFLD used **2 mg of tesamorelin (a related GHRH analog) subcutaneously, daily, for 12 months** [11]. The two studies use related but not identical molecules. They are included here for class context — the same GHRH-R / cAMP / PKA mechanism — not as a sermorelin protocol. ## The half-life problem Sermorelin's plasma half-life in humans is approximately **11-12 minutes** [7]. Peak plasma concentrations appear 5-20 minutes after subcutaneous administration, and absolute bioavailability via the subcutaneous route is roughly 6 percent. The biological effect on GH release persists for about three hours after a single dose, despite the short plasma residence [7]. This pharmacokinetic profile is the reason every dosing protocol in the literature uses **subcutaneous nightly** administration. Oral routes are not viable for the native peptide. Intravenous routes were used in diagnostic stimulation testing (1 mcg/kg IV bolus paired with 30 g L-arginine in the historical sermorelin-arginine stimulation test) but are not part of any extended-dosing protocol [14]. Intranasal administration has been investigated only in limited research settings and is not a standard route for the molecule [7]. ## Reconstitution and stability in published research Lyophilized sermorelin acetate is shipped freeze-dried and reconstituted with sterile water or bacteriostatic water (sterile water containing 0.9 percent benzyl alcohol as a preservative) immediately before research use. Stability research conducted under USP <797> compounding-pharmacy frameworks indicates that solutions reconstituted in bacteriostatic water and stored at 2-8 °C retain greater than 95 percent of label potency for approximately 28 days [17]. Reconstitution in sterile water without preservative shows substantially faster degradation — 30 to 50 percent potency loss beyond seven days at the same temperature [17]. Key research-handling considerations from the literature: avoid shaking the reconstituted vial (mechanical agitation denatures the peptide), protect from light, and avoid repeated freeze-thaw cycles [17]. The 28-day potency window from the compounding-pharmacy literature is one of the more practically consequential findings in the sermorelin record — and one of the easiest to misremember. --- A citation-anchored sketchnote of the sermorelin literature — not a clinic, not a vendor, and not a substitute for a physician.